digging resurrection
by bam
i can conjure few tasks where one of the essential ingredients is dried blood. but there i was, the lady in black, digging small graves all over the yard, one hand on the trowel, one hand in the pouch of dried blood.
like the wounds of some civil war battlefield, i sprinkled behind me a crimson-red trail. tossed blood to the wind, let it rain on each grave. a solemn benediction, indeed. a hope that what lay there would not be absconded, stripped from the tomb before its due time.
i felt the urge, but didn’t give in, to tuck little white crosses above each piled mound.
such are the demands of the autumnal garden.
just after the equinox cast its lengthening shadows, you see, i was out planting my bulbs.
i was digging for resurrection, come spring.
but this hot september morning, a morning that had me perspiring and red as a tulip in march, there as i dug in my great swaths of color-to-be, there was little to whisper of promise.
instead there abounded death and destruction. an odd mix of voodoo and witchcraft. with a pinch of botany to boot.
the bulbs, some fat, some not so, wrapped in a papery-sheath, looked each like a fat clove of garlic, or a whole stinky head. every last bulb, a life cycle on hold.
and the holes where i lay them were often disturbing a worm. a worm sliced in half, i would think, is disturbed. the mouth of my trowel, without warning or even a knock, had come crashing through roofs of many a subterranean bedroom. the worms, alas, were rudely awakened.
and then there was my sorceress’ phalanx of amulets and prescriptions: the dried blood; the bulb-booster fertilizer (actually bone and feather that’s ground to a meal, if you can stomach such sinister fuels); the odoriferous something i bathed each of the bulbs in, something they promised would keep the chipmunks and squirrels from making quick lunch of my tulips and squill and tete-a-tete daffodils.
such folly, this.
or is it?
if it works, if i cross my fingers, if the stars align, if just the right rainfall and snowfall bring drink to my bulbs, if the freeze doesn’t sink in too deep, if the blood does what it’s supposed to (and no, not bring on the vampires), well, then, i’ll have me a garden come march and april and may.
just when i’ll need it, i think. when i’m thisclose to pulling my hairs out, when i want to burn every boot in the house and all of the mittens and the scarves and the tassle-topped hats, as well.
i am planting my sanity-keeper, really.
that’s what a bulb does.
it gets you through the long, barren winter. the winter when white, darkening to sooty gray-black, is the prevailing hue of the world on the other side of the glass.
ah, but not when you’ve planted a yard full of bulbs. then, you see whole other colors. colors no one, besides you and your kaleidoscope eyes, can manage to see.
a bulb is license to imagine a landscape, to muse on the underground labor. to know that something’s at work, life is stirring, awaiting the bell for rebirth.
you look out your window in winter, you see the cobalt blue of the siberian squill, great pooling puddles of it. you see the double-white of the mount hood tulips, there by the path to the door. poking out through the soil, just after the snowdrops, that most blessed first wisp of survival.
you’ve made it, the bulb chorus will tell you. you survived the long cruel winter.
ah, but before there is resurrection, there must be death. it’s the very crux of the matter, the root of the definition, spelled out right there on page 1545 of webster’s unabridged: “a rising from the dead, or coming back to life.”
and so, on a day when the sunlight is golden. on a day when the leaves are just starting to blush and run out of green ink, i sink trowel into earth.
i am the digger of graves. into each wound in the dirt, i lay to rest all that i’ve gathered, all i could not leave behind.
stood there at the garden shop, i did, drooled over all of the choices. you would think i was picking penny candy. tossing this bulb and that in my little brown bag.
lord knows, i never remember which is which by the time i get home. that’s when the sorting begins. the purplish hyacinths, the bulbs that make your skin sort of sting, they go in one pile. and the all of the rest, herded like so many sheep. each kind to its own little flock. little bitty scilla–can something so breathtaking come from so little? dare i attempt a tulip at all, seeing as the squirrels come from miles for a bite of a tulipy lunch?
then in my head, the plotting begins. the mapping out of the graveyard. who gets buried where? what finds itself locked in solitary confinement? who gets tossed in together?
the interment could stretch on for hours, but i too often get tired.
by the end of the morning, there were lots of mass graves. i’ll leave my bulbs to wrestle it out. shove and push, make a fuss, all through the winter.
i won’t hear even a whimper. for i’ve buried them and muffled them too. the inches of compost, the droplets of blood, the piles of hoped-for snow, it is the buffer, it keeps me from knowing just how raucous a crowd i’ve buried out there in my cemetery masquerading as a bright blooming bouquet, come the months after the nothing, the silence, the waiting.
do you go bulb crazy too? do you ever feel like some sort of a witch, plying your botanical craft? partaking of wizardry there in your soils? i’m always amazed that what feels like so much on my hands and my knees some autumnal day, comes up so sparsely in spring. i do plant in the hundreds. must we go for the thousands and thousands to get what i call the shopping-mall swath? anyone yet picked up a trowel, dug up a grave for your garden-to-come? and, mostly, what of the promise of life to come, bounded up in a paper-sheathed, tucked-under-ground bulb?
6 comments:
LNH
BAM — Who knew that lurking behind such a sweet gardener is a voodoo gal who uses dried blood and ground up feathers to work her plant magic. This gardening eulogy is a beautiful antidote to the plastic orange and black season that’s about to surround and overwhelm us.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 – 03:33 PM
PJV-AZ
Every flower bulb (like every goldfish I’ve ever toted home in a plastic bag from the pet store) has promptly committed suicide once it crossed the threshold at my house. They must somehow know that it’s better to get it over with and die right away than to be subject to a novice like me. I’ve planted bulbs and waited for signs of life only to find myself staring at a pile of dirt that never produces a living thing, but NOW I know why … aha!
I’ve lived in the desert lands of Arizona from the age of 16 and have used the soil as an excuse to be a failure as a gardener. Since moving up to the mountains six years ago I’ve found the ground here is much more forgiving than that of the Phoenix valley. Springtime here is a gorgeous display of daffodils and iris showing off their magnificent shades of yellow and purple. Hey, if they can spring up year after year in unattended fields, maybe I’ve got a shot at it after all! It’s sure worth a try … of course, I’ll have to get me some of that blood and feather stuff ………
bam … how is it that you are a master at so many wonderful things! You cease to amaze me.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 – 04:40 PM
bam
pjv, i am no master. not even a mistress. i just bumble along, trying new experiments. sometimes they work, often they don’t…..i nearly choked when i read what was in that bulb-booster voodoo. talk about magical potions. get me the cauldron…….and as LNH suggests, a broom to go with it…..
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 – 05:22 PM
slj
I do not have an outdoor garden right now, but I do have a basil plant on my windowsill. But I dream of putting my hands in the soil again.
Today, I give thanks for resurrection in another way. My beautiful, one and only sister, gave birth to her first baby today. After writing here, I will be sending her a card with the following quote, “A baby, is God’s opinion that life should go on.” ~ Carl Sandburg
I don’t know if I’ve reached my quota for the month, but I will quote from the Kentucky farmer poet, Wendell Berry once more. I must also admit that I shared some of these words at some point this spring, but they are so fitting, so beautiful, so perfect for today.
Here are a few lines from Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.”
“So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world….
Ask the questions that have no answers. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years…..
Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. PRACTICE RESURRECTION.
I am glad we can practice, because some days I forget to try bringing forth life and I am grateful for all around me who practice resurrection and welcome me into their light.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 – 06:31 PM
bam
well hallelujah, sweet baby 9-25, a lovely date. an equinal date, give or take a few days. a baby on the brink of a season. the golden season. to think of a babe growing up with auntie slj in her corner. blessed baby. blessed indeed. to birth and rebirth. to wendell berry. there is no quota, by the way, where mister berry is concerned. not here at the table, at least. you can quote him as often and as lengthily as you are so inspired…..he is among the pantheon who has as much room, as much space as is essential……
i can only imagine what it would be to have a sister, and to have a sister have a baby. i think i’d have to move in until kicked out onto the stoop. blessings all around…..please grace us with the tales of her life as it unfolds…..i will cradle her in my prayers this sweet night…..
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 – 07:37 PM
bam
late breaking bulb report: dried blood didn’t work. the bulbs, half-eaten, scattered like so many marbles, have been un-interred. i think they call that exhumed. so, scratch that voodoo. think i’m destined for locks and chains. or maybe cages. this here is getting close to requiring security guards…..
Thursday, September 27, 2007 – 09:31 AM